


Fractured Perceptions

by ao_no_senshi



Category: Ultraman Gaia
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-25
Updated: 2011-03-25
Packaged: 2017-10-26 23:21:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/289008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ao_no_senshi/pseuds/ao_no_senshi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Evil twins are always confusing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fractured Perceptions

**Author's Note:**

> Tag to episode #42, Gamu vs Gamu

Fresh from the evening's briefing, Katsumi was ready to call the day over. Time to relax, kick back and do absolutely nothing for once. Stifling a yawn, he rounded a corner and blinked in surprise at the sight of Gamu walking ahead of him. What he was still doing here? he wondered. Wasn't he supposed to be in Germany or something? Or be on his way to Germany at least? Even Gamu's EX couldn't have arrived there already.

"Hey, Gamu," he called, putting on a brief burst of speed to catch up, clapping his friend on his shoulder as he paused, resting his arm there companiably. "I thought you were off base today."

Gamu looked confused for a moment, then shook his head. "Not today, no."

Katsumi frowned. "Really? Weren't you going to Germany?" He was sure that was today. Was it tomorrow instead?

"No," Gamu said eventually. "It got put off."

"Then where've you been hiding all day?" Katsumi asked with a raised eyebrow. "I haven't seen you at all today until now." And that was unusual. Even without actively seeking each other out they still tended to cross paths a lot during the day, depending on where their various duties took them.

"I don't have to spend every moment around you," Gamu snapped, shrugging his arm off forcefully and Katsumi took a step back, feeling his eyes going wide at both the action and the unexpected coolness in Gamu's voice. _What the hell?_ he thought, his temper rising along with his confusion. It wasn't like Gamu to push him away at all. What was going on?

"I never said you did," he replied evenly, folding his arms across his chest defensively. "Don't put words in my mouth, Gamu."

"I wasn't," Gamu replied testily, glaring back at him. "Just go away. Leave me alone." And with that he turned to walk off down the corridor, but Katsumi reached out and grabbed hold of his shoulder, meaning to tug him back.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" he demanded, or he was going to, but Gamu shrugged out of the hold easily and spun round, pinning Katsumi up against the wall of the corridor hard, his right hand fastening around Katsumi's throat and _squeezing_.

Immediately moving to dislodge Gamu's grip, Katsumi found his hand first blocked, then pinned against the wall. His other hand was still free, however and he grabbed hold of Gamu's wrist, trying to pry it away from his throat, kicking out at Gamu's legs. Gamu retaliated by moving closer and tangling their legs together so he couldn't kick them anymore. Okay, whatever was wrong with Gamu, he was going to have to wait until Gamu wasn't fucking crazy and trying to kill him to find out. The problem, he thought grimly as he struggled, was that while he didn't really want to hurt Gamu, right now Gamu clearly had no problem with hurting _him_ and that gave him a distinct advantage. And when had Gamu got so damned strong, anyway?

"You're irritatingly persistent," Gamu sighed and Katsumi bucked his hips forward, trying to get enough space between them that he could actually do something. "Just couldn't take the hint, could you? No, you had to push, push, push and look what you've made me do."

Until now Katsumi had never imagined that Gamu could be someone he would be afraid of, even Gamu at his pissiest didn't have a mean bone in his body, or that was what he'd thought. With a few tendrils of fear beginning to make their presence felt, Katsumi wondered what the hell had made Gamu snap like this, because either he'd lost it completely or... "Get the hell off me," he growled, just about managing to get the words out and only getting a tighter grip around his throat for his efforts.

Gamu leant in closer, examining him critically like he was some kind of experiment Gamu wasn't sure had any merit and he shoved a shoulder forward in an unsuccessful attempt to push him back. "How do you think Gamu would react if you died?" Gamu asked pleasantly. "Would he miss you, do you think?"

Would he... Gamu didn't refer himself in the third person. That meant, then, that this wasn't Gamu, no matter how much like him they looked.

"You're not Gamu," he gasped around the vice-like grip on his throat and 'Gamu' smirked, his eyes cold and hard and nothing at all like Gamu's. How could he not have seen it before? _Stupid._

"No. But thank you for telling me where to find him."

He was an _idiot_ , Katsumi thought, struggling to get free. Nothing about Gamu had been right from the moment he'd seen him, it shouldn't have taken _this_ for him to realise what was going on. And now he was getting strangled by someone who looked just like Gamu. Fucking terrific. Just as his vision began to blur, that creepy smile all he could see, Katsumi heard a shout in the distance, along with the sound of running feet and the tight grip around his throat was gone.

Slumping against the wall, coughing and trying to suck in air at the same time, Katsumi felt rather than saw movement coming towards him and he lashed out. Hell if he was going down without a fight. A warm hand closed around his fist and he looked up to find Yoneda-leader blocking the punch aimed - generously speaking - at his face, the other two members of Team Falcon flanking him. The Gamu impostor was nowhere to be seen. "Yoneda-leader," he rasped, relaxing his arm, "I like your timing."

"What just happened?" Falcon's leader demanded. "Why was Gamu trying to--"

"That wasn't Gamu," Katsumi interrupted, pushing himself away from the wall, rubbing gingerly at his throat, Yoneda-leader reaching out to steady him before Katsumi waved him off. He could stand under his own power, damn it. "Gamu's somewhere in Germany," he continued. "We need to find whoever it was pretending to be him."

He should have known, he berated himself. Gamu hadn't acted or sounded like himself, even the language he'd been using was wrong, more informal than Gamu's habitual politeness. That should have been his first clue right there. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Was he really so clueless it took being _strangled_ to realise something was off about his best friend?

"I don't think we will," Yoneda-leader sighed. "He disappeared right in front of us. One moment he was there, the next..." he shrugged. "Gone. Uncanny."

"Then we need to get hold of Gamu and let him know he's got company coming." And he'd told him exactly where to look.

***

Gamu walked wearily along the corridors of the Aerial Base, relieved to be back and looking forward to sleeping in his own bed. It had been a long couple of days, after all, and he was tired. That was the plan, anyway, but it didn't work out that way. Grabbed out of nowhere, Gamu felt himself being shoved back against the wall and he lashed out reflexively, the self-defence tricks Kajio-san and Yoshida-san had drilled him in kicking in.

They didn't help, his assailant avoiding them with ease until Gamu was securely pinned against the wall. About to shout for help, the words died unspoken as he finally got a good look at the person holding him still and his brain stuttered to a complete stop. How was this... "Kajio-san?" he said, unable to believe the evidence of his eyes. "Kajio-san, what are you doing?"

Kajio-san scowled at him, his eyes boring into Gamu's fiercely and Gamu wondered frantically what had happened in his absence to make Kajio-san act this way. Whatever it was he was sure he could fix it, he just needed to get _free_ first. Kajio-san's eyes narrowed further and for one wild moment Gamu thought he must have given something away, but then Kajio-san's expression smoothed out and he let go, stepping back and giving Gamu some space.

"It is you, then," Kajio-san said in satisfaction. "Good."

"Of course it's me," Gamu retorted, smoothing down his jacket. "Who did you think it was, Kajio-san?"

His friend shrugged and wrapped one arm around his stomach, his other elbow propped on top of it as Kajio-san's fingers brushed against his chin. That was a very bad, very distracting habit of his, Gamu thought sourly. How was he supposed to concentrate when Kajio-san did that? "We had an uninvited visitor," he said shortly. "Seemed to like walking around as you." He frowned as Gamu's gut clenched tightly. Klaus had been here while he was in Germany? Pretending to be him? "I don't think he liked me very much," Kajio-san finished and a chill ran down Gamu's spine.

"What did he do?" he demanded, raking his eyes over his friend, looking for any sign of what had happened. Ah, there. Not quite hidden between the ends of Kajio-san's hair and his collar were rising bruises and anger flared hot in Gamu's chest. It wasn't often that he got this angry but seeing the bruises around Kajio-san's throat provoked a fierce fury and if he could have Klaus in front of him again...

"Woah, Gamu, take it easy," Kajio-san said, his voice rising a little, his hands moving to rest on Gamu's shoulders. "I'm alright, okay? Relax."

"Klaus did that?" Gamu asked, trying to rein his anger in as he reached out to brush his fingers over the bruises. "While he was pretending to be me?" No wonder Kajio-san had reacted the way he had earlier. It was a wonder he wanted to be around him at all and he bit his lip as his friend flinched minutely at the touch.

"By that point it was pretty obvious it wasn't you," Kajio-san said dryly, not making any move to put more distance between them, in spite of whatever had happened. "Wait. Klaus? You know the guy?"

"He's, he _was_ , part of Alchemy Stars," Gamu replied. Not that he was part of anything anymore, except maybe space. "We didn't really get along."

***

Where the impostor had been wrong in almost every aspect, Katsumi was pleased to find that this Gamu reacted in all the right ways, including how he used his name. The fake Gamu hadn't used his name once, presumably because he hadn't known it, but this Gamu... this Gamu was real, alright.

 _"What did he do?"_ Gamu demanded, an unexpected fury burning in his eyes and it took a lot of willpower not to step back, away from a scorching anger he'd never expected to see from Gamu of all people.

"Woah, Gamu, take it easy," he said hastily, reaching out to grip Gamu's shoulders reassuringly. "I'm alright, okay? Relax." _And stop freaking me out,_ he added mentally. He wouldn't want to be on the wrong side of this Takayama Gamu, that was for sure and he was very glad that the anger wasn't aimed directly at him.

Gamu reached out and brushed his fingers along the line of bruises and Katsumi twitched, half reflexive flinch and half a strange shiver of sensation as Gamu's fingers skimmed over his skin, and as a result he didn't really take in the next few words until he recognised a name in there, a Western one. "Klaus? You know the guy?"

It wasn't really a surprise to find out the two hadn't gotten along, and this Klaus guy being part of Alchemy Stars explained a lot; like how he had been able to mimic Gamu's appearance and voice and then disappear. Both of those had been inexplicable until you realised it was simply the result of something very, very high-tech and then it all made sense. The fury was ebbing from Gamu's face but he could see it still simmering and he was determined to get rid of it entirely. That kind of anger had no place in Gamu's expression.

"Hey, you eaten yet?" he asked and Gamu shook his head.

"I only just got back," he pointed out. "I was going to go to bed."

"Go to bed after you've eaten," Katsumi suggested, jerking a thumb in the opposite direction. "The cafeteria should still be open."

Gamu looked torn, then his stomach rumbled and he sighed. "I suppose I should eat something," he sighed and Katsumi smiled in satisfaction. A low murmur of conversation caught his attention and he turned his head slightly to see Team Falcon coming around the corner. Yoneda-leader tensed the moment he saw Gamu and his hand dropped automatically to his side for the blaster he was no longer wearing. Fortunately Gamu didn't seem to have noticed and Katsumi draped an arm around his shoulder and tugged him off in the direction of the cafeteria, as much a sign that everything was alright as being the best way to get Gamu moving.

"Good," he said lightly. "If Watanabe-san is behind the counter we'll get some of the dessert she hides for you."

"She does not!" Gamu protested, his cheeks turning a faint pink with embarrassment.

"She does," Katsumi replied gleefully. "She thinks you're cute and adorable and she wants to mother you, so she keeps all the good stuff to feed you up. Just look pathetic and jetlagged and she won't be able to resist."

"Please don't tease me like that, Kajio-san," Gamu sighed as they passed Team Falcon, nodding politely at them as they did so and Katsumi noted the way all three relaxed.

"Payback for all the times you mocked my shooting scores," he said pleasantly and Gamu pouted.

"That's different."

"Is not."

"It is so."

"Is not."

"It _is_."

"Think of the dessert, Gamu, okay? Just focus on the dessert." Really, the dessert was the important thing here, why was Gamu still arguing with him?

"Dessert. Right."

"Attaboy."


End file.
